Thursday, January 09, 2014

Altered Book: Joynal Class

This is my last "old"post so I'll finally be all caught up! These were done starting in August.

This is a spread from my "Joynal" altered book from Jane Davenport's class called "Joynal". Joynal is a fabulous class specializing in drawing faeries, elves, unicorns and other magical creatures. She also teaches you how to tell a story through a wonderful series of creative prompts. It is a wonderful class indeed and I highly recommend it!

The prompt asked what accent did my faery have and is she based on traditional stories or does she live by her own rules. My faery of course has a Scottish accent! She is both based on traditional stories and, being a Scottish lass, she also lives by her own rules! She followed me home the first time we went to Scotland. I love stone circles so in my story she found me at one of the stone circles we visited in Scotland. I used a reference picture from the Celtic Lenormand deck that is being developed. It is their "Path" card. This deck will be available later this year and looks to be a wonderful one.

This is the first exercise I did in my altered journal for Jane's class following her video. This 2-page layout is a drawing done on top of a page where a piece of tissue paper was gel medium-ed down.

The technique is to put down the background first and then lay down your drawing over the top. When you have the drawing the way you want, you then "push" the background back by painting or gesso-ing over it. I had problems with getting bubbles in the tissue paper when I was trying to glue it done. I learned I had to rub off the acrylic paint quickly before it dried. Distress markers on tissue paper won't "blend" with water. They absorb too quickly. I definitely need practice with this technique - learning what works with various tissue papers (also paper napkins work).

I've worked a lot with altered books before I took Jane's class. I've had a class on altered books, watched videos, read books. However, I realized I never truly understood how to pick them out or do them. What I realized watching Jane's videos was that I was choosing my books all wrong. I picked books I loved which meant I was reluctant to do anything to them. They also did not have the right type of pages and/or binding. And I didn't remove pages.

So now I realize I need to look at the size and condition of the book and not what is in it. Glossy pages are not easy to work on - go for matte finished pages. The binding needs to be a sewn one because it is essential to take a lot of pages out. And I mean A LOT of pages! a fourth to a third. If you put in a lot of collage, you may need to take out 50% of the pages.

I found this Mother Goose bookat our local library sale racks. It is in excellent shape, has a good binding, and sturdy, matte pages. I don't care for the artwork, but the colors are good. Jane recommends to pick books with lots of text rather than a picture book. This one has lots of text. This book is large: 9" x 12". I am now on the lookout for more like it. I like the size and the thickness. I took about 25% of the pages out. I may need to remove more. I plan to do the cover near the end since I am a messy painter and don't want to mess up the cover.;)